The Risen

Monday, October 10, 2011

What Is This Book About?

"One of the most important principles of quantum physics is that two isolated, remote particles can have an instantaneous effect on one another because these two remote objects can become entangled. This is known as nonlocality and has given rise to the quantum physics concept of nonlocal space: a multidimensional space, with nothing but possibilities ... and without certainties, without matter, and without a role for time and distance. Everything in this space is uncertain, and physicists can carry out neither measurements nor observations. The nonlocal space represents a hidden reality that, at the quantum level, exerts a continuous influence on our physical world, which is the complement of nonlocal space." ~ Pim van Lommel, MD, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

August and Tim continue to 'splain all about The Risen:

Although the above quote really quite sums up much of our book in many ways, don't worry. The Risen is not about difficult quantum mechanics! It does, however, contain countless hidden levels, doors and windows, stories, worlds and lands, and many, many voices. August and Tim are like two remote objects that have become forever entangled because of their love. Quantum physics is, ultimately, telling us that love accomplishes, in invisible ways, things that seem like miracles to us here on the visible earth. The Risen are people like us but, also seemingly miraculously, no longer on the earth: they have risen. There are many extreme differences between the Risen and the non-Risen, and this book was manifested to attempt to introduce ideas, ways and means to understand and even change some of those differences ... to become more entangled with the Risen, and to realize how entangled one might already be.

And it is also about grief and loss, which is usually what brings us humans to this point of asking "why?" and "now what?". We know that one can be led to personally experience that grief can be transformed into joy, which is also a transition to a new life and way of living. This book is for those who have not yet fully shut down, but still open to change for the better.

A great deal of the primary differences between the Risen and non-Risen are psychological, or more precisely, psychospiritual in nature. This book could be seen as a kind of "psycho/spiritual/logical" textbook and guide that introduces perhaps very alien Risen behavioral and developmental concepts about what a human being is, and the mental and emotional aspects that are interfering with being psychologically free enough to dispense with fear, in order to then spiritually connect with previously hidden or unsensed realities and other aware, alive, conscious beings in those realities.

Be advised: this book is not "Mediumship 101" or "Afterlife for Dummies" — nor is it meant for Dabblers and Confirmed Skeptics. As the well-known journalist Michael Tymn has noted, "As with me 20 years ago, the boggle threshold of most people is probably too low to fully understand and appreciate what August, Tim, and the advanced Risen Ones have to say about the greater reality, but to the serious student of metaphysics this book has much to offer."

It has taken August nearly 8 years of almost-daily endeavor to help the Risen group bring this book into this world, and he also has had to struggle with new concepts, while letting go of old ones. Putting it into comprehensible written language was probably the greatest challenge of all, as the Risen do not use words as we do, if they ever use them at all. Perhaps this is why Riley Heagerty, the noted spiritualist historian, commented that the book " ... is written so well, it establishes what I can only say is a new 'Risen vernacular,' employing a sharp, daring and constantly interesting command of the English language." Written well — yes. Quickly understandable — no.

So it is not unexpected that in this "Age of Instant Gratification" many readers may not have or even want the experience or skills necessary to endure the mystification, perplexity, and even anxiety this challenging book may stimulate. Yet these are actually positive effects, and direct evidence of how the Universe mysteriously stimulates us to creatively move from inert spiritual couch potatoes to someplace else wholly different. However you decide to travel, Tim and I wish you well on your journey, and want you to rest in the knowing that you are never alone.

"Creativity is the principle of novelty. Creativity introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. The creative advance is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation which it originates. The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the 'many' which it finds and also it is one among the disjunctive ' many' which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively 'many' in process of passage into conjunctive unity... Thus the 'production of novel togetherness' is the ultimate notion embodied in the term concrescence. These ultimate notions of 'production of novelty' and 'concrete togetherness' are inexplicable either in terms of higher universals or in terms of the components participating in the concrescence. The analysis of the components abstracts from the concrescence. The sole appeal is to intuition.-- (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 26)

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"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
-- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

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"The instrument of thought, which has produced this world that does not work properly, is no longer valid. So perhaps this instrument of thought is worn out. Is there another instrument we can use?" -- Krishnamurti

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"...Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly."
-- Alfred North Whitehead - English mathematician & philosopher (1861-1947)___________________________________

". . . keeping the Risen concept of weaving in mind, perhaps at this point it can be sensed that what we have before us, from which we are inseparable and as reflected in this book, is a Supreme Tapestry. There appears to be a Very Grand Design which we all follow, either in awareness
or not, co-creatively or not -- recalling that creative means fun. As we weave we are free to make it up as we go along in any way we please, simultaneously staying within the Grand Design as imagined by Higher Imaginals, of whom we an inseparable part. The Grand Design is a work of perfections intermingled with imperfections, solutions with mistakes, and stillness within movement. The Higher Imaginals are many things, but for our purposes here, it suffices to say that they are very advanced and evolved individuals, or Higher Selves."
(from The Risen: Dialogues of Love, Grief & Survival Beyond Death; Chapter 13, Mundus Imaginalis, p. 165).